Going beyond dissent

Holy Joe Lieberman quote: “It is wrong for some on the left who go beyond dissent and demonize the president and impugn the motives of all those who support him. Like it or not, we are in this war against terror, and we are in it together.”


I’m not quite sure what it means to go “beyond dissent” or why the motives of Bushites can’t be impugned (a word defined by my computer’s dictionary as “dispute the truth, validity, or honesty of”). But it’s that phrase “like it or not” that I enjoyed.

Which brings us to today’s poll (I need to test out a different poll service):

Like being in this war against terror? Or not? Like it. Not so much.    Free polls from Pollhost.com

Of tools and professionals

In his radio address, Bush says of the Detainee Detention Act (as I shall henceforth call it), “I have one test for this legislation: The intelligence community must be able to tell me that the bill Congress sends to my desk will allow this vital program to continue.” This is a variant on his assertions that the decisions about the timing of troop withdrawals from Iraq and the number of troops deployed in the first place, are made entirely by the generals, the professional soldiers, and therefore Congress should just butt out. Since that line has been pretty successful in intimidating Congress, not wanting to be accused of playing, gasp, politics, into passivity, Bush is using it as a template, except that in this case the “professionals” he keeps talking about (professional what, he never says) are not generals but shadowy spooks whose names and track records we are not permitted to know (like bloggers, only with more people tied up in their basements), but who we are expected to trust to determine what tools they need.


Speaking of tools, today’s must-read is the Rajiv Chandrasekaran piece in the WaPo previewing his book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (isn’t that a good title?), about how the Bush administration sent a bunch of inexperienced ideologues, party donors, and media to handle the reconstruction of Iraq and how, surprisingly, it did not work. We’ve seen much of this before in dribs and drabs, but put together in a single narrative, it’s rather more powerful.

Detaining detainees in detention

The International Astronomical Union may have made the right if unpopular decision in de-planetizing Pluto, but this time they’ve gone too far (about 13 light hours), renaming planet Xena “Eris.”

In my last post I quoted but forgot to make fun of Bush referring to something called the “Detainee Detention Act.” A slip of the tongue, but revealing, I thought, of Bushian logic at its Bushianest. Just as elsewhere in the press conference he said that “one of the reasons [Saddam Hussein] was declared a state sponsor of terror was because that’s what he was,” so “Detainee Detention Act” implies that the reason these people must be detained is that they are, in fact, detainees. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Earlier this week Sikhs held a procession in Amritsar to celebrate “dignity and sanctity of the Turban.”

Bush press conference: They don’t want to be tried as war criminals

I actually saw this one, though not from the beginning. So I’m using my own notes rather than a transcript. I can use my own punctuation, as when he said of the terrorists, “They are comin’ again.” Although I occasionally got caught up with things like trying to figure out if he’d said that Iraqi had a “uni government.”


Our various enemies all have a common ideology, he said. He also doesn’t like Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions. Or the House of Commons. Or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

He doesn’t like Common Article III because it outlaws “outrages upon the human dignity” of prisoners. “That’s very vague,” he complained. “What does it mean?” He didn’t say which word he didn’t understand: outrage, human, or dignity. All three I’m guessing.

He says without “clarity,” CIA torturers, who he called “our professionals” and “decent citizens,” won’t want to go to work in the morning, won’t “step up unless there’s clarity in the law.” Because CIA torturers are all about the clarity in the law. He added, “They don’t want to be tried as war criminals.” You know how not to be tried as war criminals? As Baretta used to say, don’t do the war crime if you can’t do the war time. He even said (Bush, not Baretta) that without the “clarification” he wants (which he says is based on the McCain Act, you know the one he added a signing statement to saying he’d follow it only if he felt like it), the program of interrogations at secret prisons is “just not gonna go forward.” Don’t make me turn this waterboard around! He said if international courts are allowed to determine “how we protect ourselves,” it would “ruin” the program of secret CIA inquisitions.


He was asked (by NBC’s David Gregory) whether it would bother him if countries like Iran or North Korea did to captured American soldiers what he does, roughing prisoners up according to their own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, and putting them on trial with secret evidence. He said that was okay with him (if they “adopted the standards within the Detainee Detention Act, the world would be better”). When Gregory tried to follow up, Bush told him he’d taken too long to ask his question.


The CNN scroll is just never at the right place when you need it, is it? When Bush was denying that Iraq is in a civil war, it would have been appropriate if it repeated the story about 30 more dead bodies being found in Iraq with signs of torture. I forget what it actually was, probably something about spinach being bad for you.

Asked the difference between Republican and Democratic economic policies, he said it was all about... wait for it... tax cuts. Tax cuts, he added, determine elections, and we have a history of that in our family. Did he mean to make fun of his father’s “Read my lips” line?

Asked about whether it would be a good idea to send in special forces to capture bin Laden, he said that Pakistan was a sovereign nation and we “have to be invited.” This will come as a surprise to Afghanistan. He said that “the Paks” are in the lead. He said that the idea that he had eased off the hunt for bin Laden was an “urban myth.”

Asked about his claim that there may be a third Awakening in America, he said that was based on the number of people who come up to him on rope lines and say they’re praying for him.

Then he was struck by lightning, proving the power of prayer.

Comfortable

Bush says the purpose of the proposed legislation (which looks today to be in trouble) to legalize (retroactively) “tough interrogations” of suspected terrorists is to “provide legal clarity so that our professionals will feel comfortable about going forward with the program”. Because it’s all about whether the CIA’s... professionals... feel comfortable.

That was at a photo op with the South Korean president, who brought along a translator, who unfortunately made the mistake of translating from Korean into English, a language Bush does not speak.



Earlier in the day he met privately with the House Republican Conference. The meeting went smoothly until someone tried to eat a potato chip that Dennis Hastert had his eye on. In the resulting fight, the holographic equipment that has projected the image of Dick Cheney since his death in 2002 was damaged, resulting in the blurring you see here.


Really came a long way for a rather weak joke, didn’t I? I am so off my game today.

Quote of the week: Israeli Prime Minister Olmert: “Half Lebanon is destroyed. Is that a loss?”

Terrific tribunals for terrible terrorists

The R’s have started calling the military commissions Bush wants “terrorist tribunals.” Subtle, huh? And alliterative. But appropriate: the phrase presumes guilt just like the commissions will.

I’m taking bets on how long it takes for Joe Lieberman to start using this Republican rhetorical device.

It occurs to me that I don’t know where people actually convicted by these kangaroo courts (that’s also alliterative) would be sent to serve their sentences. Back to Gitmo? Military prisons in the US?

Compliance and colonoscopies in Guantanamo

Long article in next Sunday’s NYT Magazine on Guantanamo, a narrative history of relations between the detainees and the prison authorities – well, the guards rather than the interrogators, the interrogations aren’t really covered. It gives the longest account I’ve seen of the abortive attempt last summer to establish a prisoners’ council. The author, Tim Golden, is as reasonable and even-handed as he can be under the circumstances, which is also the impression the article gives of the military authorities, who were obviously (and unavoidably) his main sources. But in a place like Guantanamo, doing the job that Guantanamo does, reasonable and even-handed are traits that are irrelevant, even obscene. The authorities were willing, indeed eager, to negotiate about details like bottled versus tap water or not blasting the Star-Spangled Banner during the call to prayer (or, as Gen. Craddock once said, the color of the feeding tubes inserted into the noses of hunger-strikers), in an effort to achieve “compliance,” so long as larger issues like the prisoners being held indefinitely were not broached.

Indeed today Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist commented that the Guantanamo detainees are getting “24/7 medical care - better than many Americans”. Why, 16 colonoscopies have been performed there, he marveled.

Frist’s other priority in The War Against Terror this week is tacking onto the bill authorizing military operations a provision against paying off internet gambling debts with credit cards.

You’re still waiting for me to say something about the colonoscopies, aren’t you? I have way too much class for that.

Stifling

Gen. Richard Zilmer, the US commander in western Iraq, insists that we haven’t “lost” Anbar province and that we are “stifling” the rebels. Call it the Archie Bunker approach to counter-dingbatteryinsurgency.


Here’s Condi meeting with South Korean President Roh today. Not sure which one of them needs the really large spittoon.


And here’s Condi meeting with one of those creepy (and evidently tiny) Polish twins. In a scintillating exchange of dialogue, he said, “It is true I’m visiting the U.S.” You can see why he’s the prime minister.

To arms! (two arms good, four arms bad)

Headline of the day, from the WaPo: “Four Armed Men Attack U.S. Embassy in Damascus.” Now what we need to know is whether the terrorists are recruiting people who were born with extra appendages, or if they’re somehow attaching extraneous limbs to their existing recruits. We could be in an... please forgive me... arms race, people! Well, forewarned is... ok, I’ll stop now.

Invigorating

All day bloggers have been pointing out that George Allen’s campaign website has pictures of Allen meeting Saturday with members of the Macacan-American community at an “ethnic rally.” Many of those bloggers took screen shots under the mistaken impression that Allen’s people would be embarrassed by the ridicule into taking them down. But maybe Allen’s people all have Confederate paraphernalia and nooses in their offices too, cuz it’s all still up there. At the Ethnic Rally, Allen declared it to be “invigorating to be here with people from all sorts of different and diverse backgrounds”.

Doesn’t he look invigorated?

Speaking of invigorated, Condi Rice is pursuing America’s foreign-policy goals in a place I’m told is not part of the United States, some place the natives call Canada (I’m not sure what we call it in English). The Toronto Star has a slide show of “Condi’s Canadian adventure,” including this photo of her sampling the exotic local cuisine.


A Virginia woman who smoked pot with her 13-year old son as a reward when he finished his homework is facing charges of being the coolest mom ever.

Where are the mothers organizing against terrorism?

In an editorial in USA Today, Karen Hughes asks why there isn’t more “concerted moral outrage of everyday citizens” against terrorism. “[W]here are the mothers organizing against terrorism as American mothers did against drunken driving? Where are the fathers promising to teach their sons to choose to live rather than choose to die?” She wants there to be a “terrorism is bad” movement, with petition drives and bake sales and the like, modeled after the abolitionist movement.

On the off-chance that this isn’t just a parody that didn’t make it into The Onion, I’d like to help. Contest time! Yay! Provide a slogan, motto, bumper sticker or chant for Mothers Against Terrorism (MAT) (or a better name for the organization). “Hey hey, ho ho, the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes, has got to go!” “Friends don’t let friends drive explosive-laden cars into the American embassy.”

Bush 9/11 speech: leading the 21st century into a shining age of human liberty

Even if you think that war is the appropriate response to 9/11, was it in good taste for Bush to make a broadcast on its anniversary entirely oriented towards war? But of course this was not a commemoration of 9/11, but of the start of The War Against Terror (TWAT).

Evidently it’s not a clash of civilizations, it’s a struggle for civilization. Which is us, I guess. Maybe that’s just a piece of rhetoric, but it sounds to me like a rejection of pluralism and a denial of Muslim civilization. Elsewhere in the speech he said that the response of people who tried to rescue the victims of the 9/11 attacks was “distinctly American.” Presumably anyone not an American would just start going through the victims’ pockets for loose change.


If the speech was ethnocentric, it was also Christian-centric, like that bit about how they brought America to its knees, but “united in prayer.” Uh, dude, you do know that some religions expressly forbid kneeling when praying?

Terrorists, he felt the need to say in various ways over and over, are bad. We “saw the face of evil,” they “kill without mercy,” blah blah blah. And they are still “determined to attack America”. Funny, where have I heard that phrase before? Let’s see: “bin Laden determined to attack...”


The people of the Middle East “have one question of us: Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?” Um, incinerate their cities?

I thought, personally, he had to go to the bathroom

Cheney at the Pentagon: “Nine-eleven is a day of national unity. The memories stay with all of us because the attack was directed at all of us.” Obviously if it had been directed against brown-skinned people somewhere, we... or at least Cheney... would have forgotten all about it by now. “We were meant to take it personally, and we still do take it personally.” Yes, it’s all about us. Everything is always all about us.


“We have learned that there is a certain kind of enemy whose ambitions have no limits, and whose cruelty is only fed by the grief of others.” Cheney has met the enemy, and it is him.

“Yet in the conduct of this war the world has seen the best that is in our country.” I would really like to think that the “best that is in our country” has nothing to do with how we fight wars.


AP looks at the children in that Florida classroom, five years later. “[Bush’s] face just started to turn red,” says Tyler Radkey. “I thought, personally, he had to go to the bathroom.”

“Not any more ah don’t.”

President Poopy Pants was interviewed by Matt Lauer (no transcript, and the video seems only to be playable in Internet Explorer). Nothing new, although the 11-minute interview was conducted standing, about a foot apart. Lauer asked Bush, who kept talking about fighting terrorism “within the law,” about secret CIA prisons. Bush, in pissed-off mode: “So what? Why is that not within the law?” He also tells us that he’s been “assured by our Justice Department that we were not torturing.”

There are intelligence reports and conflicting intelligence reports all the time

I skipped “The Path to 9/11” (which isn’t quite the same thing as skipping down the path to 9/11), because life is too short and, you know, The Simpsons was on. I will also skip most of Monday’s coverage, with the mournful music and slow motion footage of the towers falling and whatnot, and you probably should too. Feeling sad about a tragedy is not obligatory because the calendar tells you that today is the day to feel sad about it. And you’re unlikely to hear anything that will make you a wiser or better person, just as 9/11 did not make us a wiser or a better nation.

5 months after 9/11, Bush was so embarrassed about not having captured bin Laden that he never spoke the man’s name. For some reason, 5 years of failure is less embarrassing than 5 months, and Bush has taken to quoting him in every speech. I suppose he’ll do it again today, but one could wish that he’d quote Jefferson or Paine, one of the idealists who helped create that freedom for which they, you know, hate us. Making us secure at any price is not the high moral calling Bush seems to believe it to be.

Condi went on no fewer than three talk shows this morning. She came close to admitting that the intel on WMDs in Iraq was wrong, but “once you’re in Iraq you can learn things that you could not possibly know before you were in Iraq.” Have to invade a country to learn whether it was worth invading. Asked on a different program about a 2002 CIA report that Iraq was not supplying chemical or biological weapons or training to Al Qaida, she said, “There are intelligence reports and conflicting intelligence reports all the time.”

And she insisted, contrary to Friday’s Senate committee report, that there were “multiple contacts going back a decade between Osama bin Laden and Iraq.” And when asked what about all the countries that sponsor terrorists who we haven’t invaded, she offered this: “Well, but Saddam Hussein was special in this case. This is somebody against whom we went to war in 1991.” Um, so?


Really, for someone with a doctorate, you have to wonder about her inability to use facts to support a thesis. Here’s how she responds to a rather apposite question (but with no follow-through) from Chris Wallace:

Q: Secretary Rice, what evidence do you have that the homegrown Sunnis and Shia fighting each other in Iraq, and of course that at this point is the vast majority of the violence, that they have any interest in attacking the U.S.?

RICE: Well, clearly the person who set off much of the sectarian violence, who plotted the notion that Shias should go after Sunnis and you should try and spark civil conflict, actually was the al-Qaida leader at the time, Zarqawi, who we later killed.

Q: But he’s gone.

RICE: Well, but it was his strategy and we know that, to try and set off sectarian violence.

Back to Saddam: “We were still at war with him in 1998 when we used American forces to try and disable his weapons of mass destruction.” We did what now?

Validating the strategy of the terrorists

The WaPo, in a long story about why we still haven’t found bin Laden (short answer: Pakistan isn’t helping, and the US has starved the mission of resources), has an anecdote that if properly sourced should by yet another reason why Rumsfeld has to go: in November 2002, after the CIA assassinated an Al Qaida leader in Yemen, Rumsfeld was livid that it wasn’t the military that had done it, and ordered NSA head Michael Hayden to stop sharing intel with the CIA of the sort that had made it possible. The article says that Hayden claims not to recall the conversation, which is funny because you’d think that would have been an important one to remember. The Post doesn’t seem to have asked Rummy for his recollections. And while the paper is evidently sure enough of its source’s accuracy to put Rummy’s words in quotation marks, its failure to name that source renders the story merely interesting rather than usable (that is, you can’t demand Rummy’s resignation on the basis of this sort of hearsay).

I wonder if the 9/11 tv programs will rerun footage of the many times Bush said that bin Laden “can run but he cannot hide”?

The LAT has an analysis piece that starts by saying that the US military won’t say how it came up with that figure of a 50% reduction in sectarian deaths in Baghdad because, shh, it’s a secret.

During weekly news briefings deep inside barricaded compounds, commanders regularly display slick charts, multicolored bar graphs and PowerPoint presentations, all heralding good news.

“One more indicator that operations are in fact reducing the amount of attacks on civilians is shown here on this graph,” Caldwell assured reporters the other day, pointing to a bar chart dutifully placed on an easel by a stone-faced uniformed subordinate. But all the numbers had been carefully scrubbed. They were classified.

The Iraqi government’s contribution to opacity: the Baghdad morgue has just been banned from releasing death figures, which will now come from the Shiite-dominated Health Ministry, and “Morgue officials who previously provided details have abruptly ‘retired’ or left the country.”

The article also discusses the recent use of the term “death squads” by the Pentagon to describe the groups responsible: “By unmooring death squads from the context of government-backed Shiite militias, U.S. officials have redefined the problem — and avoided a direct confrontation with the U.S.-backed Iraqi leadership.” Now that you mention it, the US used that term in the 1980s to deflect blame from the Central American governments backed by Reagan, applying it to those killing leftists in El Salvador, where the death squads were closely linked to the military, and Honduras, where the death squads were the military.

On the talk show circuit today, Condi and Cheney both denied the Senate report (which Cheney said he hadn’t read) that Saddam Hussein had no connection to Al Qaida.

Cheney also hadn’t read the WaPo article on the hunt for bin Laden. Or the NYT story saying that his ascendancy over the White House is weakening. Evidently he didn’t think he’d be asked about any of this on Meet the Press on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, although he was prepared to discuss current cinema – “‘Snakes on a Plane’ was a real hoot, Tim, a real hoot.”

What else did Cheney, wielding his Index Finger of Doom, have to say? Well, as always he supported a free and open discussion of American foreign policy: “And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we’ve had in the United States, suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists.”


He refused to say whether there are more or fewer terrorists now than there were 5 years ago.


He claimed that everything he ever said was correct, that we were in fact greeted as liberators, and that when he said the war would be over quickly, “that’s true within the context of the battle against the Saddam Hussein regime and his forces. That went very quickly.” And the “last throes” thing, that was also true, I forget how, but it was true, goddamit!


The Shiite-Sunni “strife,” he said, is entirely the fault of Zarqawi and the mosque bombing.

In an interesting slip when defending Maliki’s visit to Iran (“It also visits the Saudis”), he admitted, “the new government in Iraq. It is a Shia government, no question about it.”


On the Iranian nuclear program, Cheney cited information from the International Atomic Energy Agency, “an international body that I think most people wouldn’t question.” Russert reminded him that he did in fact question the IAEA during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: I asked you on this very program...

VICE PRES. CHENEY: That’s correct.

MR. RUSSERT: ...about ElBaradei and you said he’s wrong.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yes. It wasn’t consistent with our report.

MR. RUSSERT: But he was right about Iraq.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I haven’t, I haven’t looked at it. I’d have to go back and look at it again.

You do that.

They’re violent in Iraq for a reason

The Republicans have put out what purports to be a newspaper from 2007 showing what would happen if, heaven forfend, the Democrats win the 2006 elections. Bush impeached! Star Wars dismantled! Tax cuts for the rich repealed! Michael Moore eating! Universal health care! Don’t miss the horoscopes.

Bush gave an interview to ABC’s Charles Gibson. Here are some quotes, taken out of context, just because I feel like it:

“You know, when you have Republicans hugging Democrats, it really does inspire the nation.”

“No question the Iraq War has been a divisive, you know, war”.

“Some say, ‘Well, it’s impossible for democracy to take hold in the Middle East.’ Well, that’s true if we leave.”

“We have learned since that [Saddam] did not use them, but he had the capacity to use weapons of mass destruction.”

“No question they’re violent in Iraq, but they’re violent in Iraq for a reason”.

“The short term objective is to understand the stakes in this war against extremists. The long term objective is to ... win the ideological struggle.”

I mean, they are all very hot

The LAT got hold of a recording of Gov. Schwarzenegger with his advisers, speculating about the ethnicity of a state legislator (“She maybe is Puerto Rican or the same thing as Cuban. I mean, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it.”). His people are claiming it was a joke. No one mentioned that other Austrian who had theories about the blood of different races. But the best part of the story was when the LAT set the scene for us:

The meeting probably took place in the Ronald Reagan Cabinet Room, the governor’s de facto office that adjoins his smaller official quarters. The conference room faces east toward lush Capitol Park and has a long conference table that serves as a giant desk. The sword from Schwarzenegger’s movie “Conan the Barbarian” rests on a nearby table.

I don’t see dead people

So the Pentagon touted an astounding 50% drop in civil war-related deaths in Baghdad, thanks to Operation Forward Together, but then the Iraqi Health Ministry revised its figures up drastically, showing the number of deaths basically the same. Not that the Pentagon is admitting it, as shown by that hapless general on McNeil-Lehrer yesterday, still saying “well that’s not what our numbers show.” Dude, their numbers come from the Baghdad morgue. They get dead bodies, they count dead bodies. You’re not disputing numbers, you’re disputing the existence of 750 corpses you evidently didn’t know about. So the next question is: we’re occupying their country, we have responsibility for security, we’re running a major operation to reduce sectarian violence in the capital... and we don’t know how many fatalities there are in the capital to within plus or minus 50%? We had no one on the ground with enough of a sense of the overall picture to realize that the claim that deaths were down 50% did not accord with that overall picture?

Best line in the WaPo story: the Health Ministry is planning to build some more morgues, get more refrigeration units and hire more personnel to cope with the influx of dead bodies, but said it had “nothing to do with the violence and killing.”

Restoration tragedy

In the NYT today, David Sanger writes, “Mr. Bush is challenging Congress to restore to him the authority to put the United States’ worst enemies on trial on terms he has defined.” Restore? The whole point of the federal court rulings has been that Bush does not have and never had that authority either under law or the constitution.

O.J. Simpson has failed to give the heirs of Ron Goldman the $33.5 million they were awarded, so Goldman’s father is asking LA County Superior Court to transfer to him O.J.’s “right of publicity,” including the rights to his name, image and likeness.

The Iraqi government announced that it hanged 27 “terrorists” Wednesday. Which seems to be all it’s willing to disclose; it wouldn’t say where this took place, and I don’t think it released their names. Secret mass executions are back, baby! Freedom, ain’t it grand?

No, really, ain’t it?

Wherein is revealed why America is a wonderful country

Another day, another Bush speech. Fortunately, right near the start, he tells us, “Many Americans look at these events and ask the same question: Five years after 9/11, are we safer? The answer is, yes, America is safer. (Applause.)” Who really needs to know more than that?

Making the case that one of the major goals of The War Against Terror (TWAT) is to deny “safe haven” to the terrorists (no one thought to excise this bit after Pakistan ceded Waziristan to the loons?), he quotes a “fatwa” issued by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1996, “by the grace of Allah, a safe base here is now available.” Notice how Bush subtly included the “by the grace of Allah” bit, which doesn’t add anything substantive to the quote except to remind us that Osama is a Muslim.

Actually, this is another speech with a more clever and effective rhetorical strategy than we’re used to hearing from Chimpy. He narrates the 9/11 plot as it unfolded, interpolating at various points how it could have been stopped if there had been in place the visa screening and unified watch-lists we now have, or the warrantless surveillance he wants Congress to legalize. Most of this is Bush congratulating himself for closing the barn door after the horse has, um, hijacked an airplane with box-cutters, but someone has put better than usual words into his mouth.

How they come out of his mouth is another matter entirely: “And the United States Congress was right to renew the terrorist act -- the Patriot Act. (Applause.) The Terrorist Prevention Act, called the Patriot Act.”


He went on to a fundraiser, where he said:

I fully understand why Americans are troubled by the death and destruction they see on their television screens. I know that. You see, it’s easy to understand because I understand the compassion of the United States of America. Isn’t it a wonderful country when people suffer when they see a child maimed by an extremist’s car bomb. It’s the nature of our country.

Makes you proud to be an Amurriken.

Re-branding Guantanamo

One effect of transferring prisoners from CIA custody to Guantanamo is that Gitmo now has real terrorists people have heard of, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They’re trying to restore Gitmo’s reputation (!) as the place where “the worst of the worst” are stowed (albeit with volleyball courts and Harry Potter), rather than the place where low-level go-fers, wannabes and innocents sold out for the reward money are tied down in restraint chairs and forcibly fed (how many prisoners are still hunger-striking, by the way?).

The US Senate refuses (70-30) to limit the use of cluster bombs near civilians, or to restrict their sales to countries like Israel that refuse to do the same.

Harper’s follows up a Guardian story I must have missed, that a UN report on the history of human rights abuses in Afghanistan has been suppressed because it names those responsible, some of whom are currently prominent in the Afghan government, parliament or military (click here for the report in pdf).

I think you understand why

Somewhat unfortunate headline of the day: “Bush Taps Peters for Transportation.”

Bush gave a broadcast speech in support of secret prisons and torture. He surrounded himself with lots of American flags in case you were wondering if this is still America.


The centerpiece of the speech was a story about how the torture of Abu Zubaydah (who many analysts doubt is as important as the US claims he is, or indeed as important as he claims he is). It’s a rather odd and not hugely believable story, or maybe it’s just the way Bush tells it. Zubaydah, who the US had shot and was holding in a secret prison, “declared his hatred of America. During questioning, he at first disclosed what he thought was nominal information,” including descriptions of Al Qaida members planning a terrorist attack in the US, and where to find them. Then he clammed up, and “it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures. ... I cannot describe the specific methods used -- I think you understand why... But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary.” So they extracted information from him through these unnameable “procedures,” and then “confronted” other prisoners with it, whereupon they immediately caved: “When confronted with the news that his terror cell had been broken up, Hambali admitted that the operatives were being groomed at KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed]’s request for attacks inside the United States -- probably [sic] using airplanes.” Evidently despite being trained to resist interrogation, they never considered the possibility that interrogators might lie to them.

The [sic], by the way, is in the transcript, rather mysteriously. There’s another mysterious sic, a reference to Al Qaida and Taliban fighters being “held secretly [sic]”.


According to him, any number of plots to blow things up, fly airplanes into things, or spread anthrax, have been thwarted because of data given by prisoners held secretly [sic] after alternative sets of procedures were used upon their persons. And yet he claimed once again, “the United States does not torture.” As proof of this, he cites the McCain Act, neglecting to mention his signing statement. So he won’t tell us – “I think you understand why” – the procedures that induced fanatical terrorists to betray their ideals, their plans, their friends and their cause, but the United States does not torture. Phew.

He does tell us that CIA interrogators “had to complete more than 250 additional hours of specialized training”. Oddly enough, he says that like it’s supposed to be reassuring.

Today marks the first time that the White House has admitted that the CIA holds prisoners in secret prisons outside the country. It has not said under what legal authority it does so, or where those prisons are. Or did so, since Bush says that the CIA’s prisoners are all being transferred to DOD control at Guantanamo. Since they’ve denied up until now that there were secret prisons and secret prisoners, I can’t imagine why we would take that claim seriously.

Also, the Pentagon today released a new interrogation manual, which bans hooding, the use of dogs, sexual humiliation, waterboarding, etc. None of this applies to the secret CIA prisons.

Bush demanded that Congress pass laws establishing military tribunals and ensuring that interrogators using alternative procedures cannot face prosecution under the War Crimes Act.

Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?

Bush gave the first in the latest series of “pretty please won’t you support my war?” speeches today. It’s actually a kind of interesting speech, containing many quotes from documents and speeches of Al Qaida leaders and others showing that they don’t like us very much and that they think Iraq is important to their cause and so on. He says ignoring these statements would be like ignoring Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Lenin’s “What Is To Be Done?” He says that “Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?” but intentions are not capabilities. Al Qaida may want to take over Iraq and Afghanistan and establish a caliphate from Basra to Boise, or wherever, but...

OK, right in the middle of that sentence I realized that just as Bush was treating bin Laden’s wet dreams as sensible strategic thinking, I was attempting to engage Bush’s speech with logic, which is about as sensible as punching jello. Moving on...

Condi Rice has translated the “people who oppose the Iraq war are like Nazi-appeasers” argument into African-American, telling Essence magazine, “I’m sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold.” She also added that she’s sure there are some people who think Captain Kirk should have “taken a peace” with the Tribble-hating Klingons...

Like Bush’s logic, Condi’s charge is too fatuous to merit a response, but let’s compare & contrast their tone with that of members of the Democratic Congressional leadership. Reid, Pelosi, Murtha, Biden, Lantos et al have written to George Bush asking him to “consider changes to your Iraq policy” and “consider changing the civilian leadership at the Defense Department”. It’s the tone of supplication that annoys me. Not just that they don’t dare to say R*msf*ld’s name out loud, but that in requesting not that he do these things but only that he “consider” doing them, they are reaffirming his contention that only he has any say over foreign and military policy. They are speaking as if they are humbly offering advice to an emperor, not as if they are people with any share of power themselves. Bush, while paying utmost attention to Al Qaida fantasists with delusions of grandeur, will not have to ask “Will we listen?” about this letter.

(Update: which is why the reply to a letter written by a bunch of United States senators was delegated to White House chief of staff Josh Bolten.)

Just treat us the way we treat you

I’ve had one report of problems with this site in Internet Explorer 6. Has anyone else experienced that? My current stats show that 39% of you are using IE6 to access my blog, but they don’t say if that’s the last thing you ever did.

Bush gave a little Labor Day speech at the Paul Hall Center for Maritime Training and Education. He doesn’t have much to offer actual working-class people, so he talked about tax cuts: “I like it when people are working for a living, have more after-tax money in their pocket. That’s what I like.”



And he talked about dependence on foreign oil: “I mean, the problem is we get oil from some parts of the world and they simply don’t like us.” You know what they call parts of the world that don’t like us? The world.


He talked about opening up foreign markets to American goods: “See, we got 5 percent of the world’s people here in the United States, which means 95 percent are potential customers.” He added, “And my message to the world is this: Just treat us the way we treat you.” There’s a truly scary thought.


I’ll leave you with a better one, which I stumbled upon on the Internet Movie Database: there will be a Futurama movie (for video).

Whaddaya want, an engraved invitation?

Israeli PM Olmert claims to have made repeated offers to Lebanese PM Siniora (which Siniora says he never received and wouldn’t accept) to “sit down together, shake hands, make peace and end once and for all the hostility, fanaticism and hatred that part of his country feels towards us.” I don’t understand Siniora: who wouldn’t accept such a gracious offer? In a variant of that sentence, Olmert said he wanted to “sit, shake hands, make peace and end once and for all the hostility and jealousy”. I’d be interested to know what he thinks the Lebanese are jealous of.

Book review: Steven Poole, Unspeak

I seem to be reading bloggers in book form lately. July I read and reviewed Glenn Greenwald’s book. Then I read “Crashing the Gate,” a book supposedly about politics but with no idea in its head that is not about winning elections. If that thought doesn’t bother you and depress you a little bit, maybe you’ll like the book.

Speaking of books by bloggers, I think everyone should pester Billmon to write one.

Which brings us to Steven Poole’s Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality.

One of the unexpected pleasures of blogging is discovering a blog you like because they discovered you first. So I’m declaring an interest: I am blogrolled on Poole’s blog, also called Unspeak, and he has posted comments here two or three times. I thought I’d recommended his blog before, I certainly intended to, but a search indicates I haven’t.

One of my areas of bloggy focus, in the jokes as well as the more serious bits, has increasingly been the use of language in politics. So Poole’s book on that subject is very much of interest to me. Language has also been a great concern of the Bushies, who are constantly telling us to be careful what we say, that those who think we aren’t engaged in a “war” against “terror” are mistaken, that Iraq is not in a “civil war,” that prisoners were “abused” and not tortured,” that it’s not domestic surveillance, it’s terrorist surveillance, etc etc. Democrats have begun to show some interest in “framing,” following George Lakoff, who unlike Poole is a professional linguist, with degrees and everything, but whose work I find to be much less persuasive and useful than Poole’s.

Poole’s concept of “unspeak” focuses attention on how political language functions. “Unspeak” is a catchy term (although not catchy enough for the Guardian, which recently mis-identified him as the author of “Unthink”), although it arguably creates a false distinction between propagandistic language and ordinary words, downplaying the extent to which all vocabulary influences and canalizes our modes of thinking. Unspeak is language designed not only to advance one’s position, but to preempt and delegitimze one’s opponents’ viewpoints. “Rhetorically,” Poole says, “Unspeak is a kind of invasive procedure: it wants to bypass critical thinking and implant a foreign body of opinion directly in the soft tissue of the brain.” It works well in our newsbite age because “it packs the maximum amount of persuasion into the smallest space.” The word “reform,” for example, implies the superiority of any proposed change: “The very word ‘reform’ thus argues efficiently in favour of itself, whatever it actually is, in paradigmatic Unspeak fashion.” Another example: “To call someone an ‘extremist’ is to denounce him merely for his position on our imaginary spectrum of ideas, rather than to engage with what he is actually saying.”

The book is a compendium of case studies of such terms as community, global warming/climate change, sound science, intelligent design, ethnic cleansing, the Israeli apartheid wall/security fence/separation barrier, weapons of mass destruction, terrorist, extremist, war on terror, abuse, enemy combatant, and others, tracing their coinage, spread and evolution. He even makes brief forays into Unspeak in other languages; it had never occurred to me to ask what Israeli “settlements” are called in Hebrew and Arabic.

People who like my blog will enjoy this book. Indeed, there is some overlap between our writings. For example, we both object to the phrase “freedom is on the march,” which he traces back to Reagan and observes that “To be ‘on the march’ means to be unfree, insofar as one is subject to military discipline,” while I wrote (two years ago), “Freedom does not march. It may walk, hop, skip, traipse, mosey, even flounce, but it does not march.” His humor is similar to mine too, except he’d spell it humour, and I must say seeing blog-like snarky humor on the printed page rather than a computer screen took a little getting used to. Actually, the book is quite like Poole’s blog, so if my recommendation isn’t (sniff) enough, you can window-shop there.

Powell’s link

Amazon link

For those of you not playing volleyball and reading Harry Potter...

I forgot to mention that in his op-ed piece, Rumsfeld made a big deal about Guantanamo having volleyball and basketball courts and that the inmates are all reading Harry Potter. Does anyone truly believe (as Rummy would say) that Gitmo prisoners are allowed to use the volleyball and basketball courts?

I’m sitting by the computer waiting to pounce on any juicy news this holiday weekend, but so far not a dicky bird. Also, the change to Beta Blogger seems to have cut my readership way down, possibly because there’s a new RSS feed and the old feed may or may not be working for everybody, and of course I have no way of contacting them to tell them that, and did I mention how annoyed I’m getting with Beta Blogger?

Or possibly my stats are low because my readers are all at the beach, playing volleyball and basketball and reading Harry Potter.

Anyway, while we’re waiting for someone to do something for me to mock, here are some London Review of Books (LRB) personal ads (for those of you looking for that special someone to play volleyball and basketball and read Harry Potter with). The complete collection of my favorites is here.

Estella, 42, seeks Pip. Low expectations. Box. No. 17/03

I am not as high maintenance as my highly polished and impeccably arranged collection of porcelain cats suggests, but if you touch them I will kill you. F, 36. Likes porcelain cats. Seeks man not unused to the sound of sobbing coming from a bedroom from which he is strictly prohibited. Tell me how attractive I am at box no. 16/08

6.10 am, January 19, 1977. Snow falls for the first time on West Palm Beach. The snow spreads to Fort Lauderdale by 8.30am, continuing south to Miami and Homestead. At Crandon Park Zoo, heat lamps are brought in to protect the iguanas. True story. Man (35) incapable of making any point whatsoever would like to meet woman to 40 for nights of awkward smiles and petering off mid-sentence. Box no. 16/05

I’m placing this ad against my better judgment. But then the last time I listened to my better judgment it told me the only way to find a well-read articulate man to 45 was to hide in a bin outside his flat until he arrived home from work then lunge wildly at him as he struggled to put the key in his door. If the ad doesn’t work, keep your bins inside until collection day. Woman. 40. Tactile and cuddly in a mildly terrifying sort of way. Box no. 17/06

When the authorities eventually remove this covert recording device from my brain, they’ll be able to download not only the most profound musings on the universe ever conceived by man but also possibly the whereabouts of my car keys. Until then paranoid amateur tailor (M, 37, Warwickshire) remains unable to take these cross-stitch manuals back to the library. The chirps and whistles aren’t getting any quieter, and the fines aren’t getting any smaller, but this dog-fur suit is sewing up a storm at box no. 17/09 That’s not revulsion you’re feeling right now – it’s passion (or possibly it is revulsion).

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this personal advert puts me firmly on the map. Box no. 17/10

Shepherd of Love seeks F to 45 free of scrapie, pinkeye and Caseous Lymphadenitis. Vet (M, 43). Little experience of human contact outside the farming communities of Pembs. Box no. 16/01

‘Good news! My favourite flavour of crisp is in production again!’ If this is a sentiment you have ever expressed or conceived in adulthood, you needn’t write. You know who you are. F, 32. Box no. 16/09

Meeting the stringent international legal standards for civil war

Wouldn’t you know it? On the Friday before a holiday weekend, the Pentagon released a report (pdf) saying that violence is increasing in Iraq, that “Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife” in which civilians are increasingly targeted, and admitting that the campaign to reduce violence in Baghdad has had no effect.

It admits that “Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad,” but gives this very comforting reason why there won’t be a civil war, or at least not something we’ll ever call a civil war: “there is no generally agreed upon definition of civil war among academics or defense analysts.” So the term has no meaning? Funny, because you seemed to think it had a meaning when you said on page 3, “the current violence is not a civil war.” It goes on, “Moreover, the conflict in Iraq does not meet the stringent international legal standards for civil war.” So that’s all right, then.

Did you know there were stringent international legal standards for civil war? Really, you have to dot every i and cross every t, it’s all “the party of the first part” this and “no implied warranty is created” that. Lawyers, huh? Take the fun out of everything.

Comment link, same caveats as before.

Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America is the real source of the world’s troubles?

BBC headline: “Pope in Visit to Religious Relic.” Coals to Newcastle.

Jonathan Cook provides a good demolition of Israeli lies and exaggerations about the late unpleasantness, including claims that over a billion Israelis were forced to flee their homes because of Hezbollah rockets, while another 1.7 trillion were in bomb shelters. Some of these lies are about pretending to have suffered more than the Lebanese, and some are because the Israeli government intends to stiff the Israeli Arabs who are half the population of northern Israel and suffered a disproportionate number of deaths, damaged buildings etc.

We’ve been hearing a bit lately about military families winding up paying usurious rates on payday loans, which effects security clearances. The California state senate rejected a bill to cap those interest rates at 36%.

Secretary of War Rumsfeld had an op-ed piece in the LA Times today. As always, he had a lot of questions and they were all rhetorical, designed, he said, “to guide us during this struggle against violent extremists.” Here are those questions:

• With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that vicious extremists can somehow be appeased?

• Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?

• Can we truly afford to pretend that the threats today are simply “law enforcement” problems rather than fundamentally different threats requiring fundamentally different approaches?

• Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America — not the enemy — is the real source of the world’s troubles?

Let the great debate begin! I like how each one has that “can we really” or “can we truly” phrase, as if someone had already said yes and he’s responding, No, can we troooly blame America first (a phrase he’s been very fond of recently)? Rummy says the question is “whether we believe that the defense of liberty is worth the cost.” Gee, I’m pretty sure that’s a trick question.

To which you can respond in the comment link below. I haven’t gotten HaloScan working, but I can cobble together comments links individually. It’s just a pain in the ass and it may disappear if I ever do get HaloScan functional.

Blogspot blues, redux (updated)

I switched over to the new version of Blogger, and made a few minor design changes, like the font and color of my blog title. I tried to change that color once before, and it looked fine on the front page, the blog title in maroon, the subtitle in red, but on other pages it was an ugly purple. The interface on Beta Blogger (yes, they’re calling it Beta Blogger, which sounds like beta blocker) is more user friendly, for those of us who only speak Pig HTML.

I was going to ask for a show of hands about some of the elements (for example, what color should I use for hyperlinks and visited hyperlinks, currently blue and grey respectively), but I’m having a major problem with comments.

Does anyone know how to re-install Haloscan in Beta Blogger? Haloscan’s automatic install doesn’t work, and Blogger rejects the html generated by Haloscan’s manual install. Instructions using very simple words would be much appreciated.

(Update: there are comments for this post only which should work, but it's not something I can use normally, so I still need Haloscan help. Anyone else having problems with or comments about the blog's appearance can also comment).

(Update: attempting to simply insert html [which may not work in Beta Blogger since it was designed for old Blogger] into the template including phrases like "/www.haloscan.com/comments/wiiiai/<$BlogItemNumber" and "...javascript">postCount('<$BlogItemNumber$>" produces the reaction from Blogger: Invalid variable declaration in page skin: Variable is used but not defined. Input: BlogItemNumber. Does that tell anyone what the problem is?

I also need to figure out how to make the Blogspot bar at the top go away again, as the “search this blog” feature sucks.

Let me point out one nice new feature: at the bottom of each individual post page, there are links for “newer post” and “older post.” This means you can navigate the posts in chronological order rather than reading down the home page in reverse chronological order. If your computer accepts cookies, you can tell which posts are new since your last visit by the color of the post titles (blue or grey, remember?) in the archives section in the right-hand column.

Other bloggers on Blogspot should probably not change to Beta until a few more of the bugs are worked out. Also, my blog was off-line for 2 hours while they transferred it, which I'd have done in the middle of the night had they warned me. And don’t forget to save your old template first; I had to extract from mine the code for my Sitemeter, PayPal, Amazon, Powell’s and Google search functions (although the Beta interface made it very easy to plug them in). Only HaloScan was a problem, about which, let me repeat, HELP!!

The ideological struggle of the 21st century

Bush addressed the American Legion in Salt Lake City today.
His rhetoric about Iraq is not getting less messianic over time: “the battle for Iraq is now central to the ideological struggle of the 21st century.” So how was that vacation, George? Catch a lot of fish? Get a good rest from the ideological struggle?

“Ideological struggle,” by the way, is his new favorite phrase.

He admits that there are “radicalized followers of the Sunni tradition” and “radicalized followers of the Shia tradition,” and “homegrown” terrorists, but insists that these all “form the outlines of a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology. And the unifying feature of this movement, the link that spans sectarian divisions and local grievances, is the rigid conviction that free societies are a threat to their twisted view of Islam.” Also, they’re all secretly controlled by the Trilateral Commission. Because, honestly, what’s a good conspiracy theory without the Trilateral Commission? And Freemasons.

There’s an interesting new twist to The History of the Middle East According to a Man Who Couldn’t Find It on a Map: he’s still saying that religious extremism and terrorism developed in the Middle East because the US (it’s always all about the US, of course) was only interested in apparent stability and calm. Now he says that this was actually the correct policy at the time: “we were fighting the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and it was important to support Middle Eastern governments that rejected communism.”

But that was then. Now it’s democracy time, because democracies are peaceful and “focus on building roads and schools -- not weapons of mass destruction.” I forget, who has the biggest stockpile of WMDs in the world?

Now here’s a sentence that... oh, words fail me: “Dissidents with the freedom to protest around the clock are less likely to blow themselves up during rush hour.”

“Our enemies saw the transformation in Lebanon and set out to destabilize the young democracy.” Again, it’s all about us: “our enemies.”

“I appreciate the troops pledged by France and Italy and other allies for this important international deployment. Together, we’re going to make it clear to the world that foreign forces and terrorists have no place in a free and democratic Lebanon.” Er, except for foreign forces from France and Italy and...

The terrorists are totally wrong about everything, except when they agree with me, because if you can’t trust bin Laden’s judgment, whose judgment can you trust?:

Here at home we have a choice to make about Iraq. Some politicians look at our efforts in Iraq and see a diversion from the war on terror. That would come as news to Osama bin Laden, who proclaimed that the “third world war is raging” in Iraq. It would come as news to the number two man of al Qaeda, Zawahiri, who has called the struggle in Iraq, quote, “the place for the greatest battle.” It would come as news to the terrorists from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and other countries, who have to come to Iraq to fight the rise of democracy. It’s hard to believe that these terrorists would make long journeys across dangerous borders, endure heavy fighting, or blow themselves up in the streets of Baghdad, for a so-called “diversion.”

Hey, American soldiers went to Iraq because there were supposed to be weapons of mass destruction; Rick went to Casablanca for the waters: people make mistakes, they are misinformed. You’ve never traveled a long distance for a crappy vacation someplace you thought would be fun?

Bush says that until we intervened in the Middle East, it was on a path where “a generation from now, our children will face a region dominated by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons.” Which may or may not be true, but what an insult to an entire region. As is this: “Or we can stop that from happening, by rallying the world to confront the ideology of hate, and give the people of the Middle East a future of hope.” Note the verb: we are the givers, they the passive receivers. Thus, when he says that freedom is a gift from the Almighty...


(Update: A Tiny Revolution links to video of what I missed by only reading the transcript: “This war will be difficult, this war will be long, and this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists of tola-tera-tera-to-totalitarians.” Banana-fo-fana.)

Would you buy a used war from this man?

This is the lead of a WaPo story: “President Bush and his surrogates are launching a new campaign intended to rebuild support for the war in Iraq by accusing the opposition of aiming to appease terrorists and cut off funding for troops on the battlefield”. Actually, that’s about silencing the opponents of the war, which is very much not the same thing as “rebuilding support” for it. There is simply no way to rebuild support for this war. There may be some inattentive people who still believe that the war is transforming the Middle East in a, you know, good way, or that we are spreading, as Bush phrases it, “the peace,” but their number is not going to increase.

Lacking a convincing positive rationale, they’re pushing the fear button (going to the fear well? Metaphors, people, I need metaphors!), but I don’t think most Americans see a strong connection between Iraq and the threat of terrorism in the US or subscribe to the Bushite assertion that, as Frank Rich put it, “If we leave the country that had nothing to do with 9/11, then 9/11 will happen again.” I’m especially amazed that the remarkably silly phrase, that if we leave Iraq, the terrorists will “follow us home,” which I made fun of when the alliterative Peter Pace first uttered it, has actually been adopted by Bush.

The other line I’ve been hearing over and over the last two weeks is that if Iraq falls to the “terrorists,” they’ll have access to all that oil. And that’s our oil, dammit!

Given the collapse in the credibility of so much of the rhetoric about Iraq, I’m not sure what language they’d use to justify a pre-emptive war against Iran. I think someone asserting “We’ll be greeted as liberators” would be greeted with guffaws.

By the way, that WaPo story more or less redeemed itself after that crappy opening:

Pressed to support these allegations, the White House yesterday could cite no major Democrat who has proposed cutting off funds or suggested that withdrawing from Iraq would persuade terrorists to leave Americans alone.

Fallen in the hands of evildoers

Indy article on the increasingly blatant interventions of the American ambassador to Nicaragua in its forthcoming elections.

The Catholic Church will excommunicate the medical personnel who performed Colombia’s first legal abortion... on an 11-year old who had been raped by her stepfather. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo said the girl had “fallen in the hands of evildoers.” He did not of course mean the stepfather. The Guardian quotes a Colombian senator, Gina Parody, who is on the right side and so gets one (1) free pass for that name.

I don’t have anything insightful to say about it, but I hope everyone’s read this story about the Muhammad and Jaber Ismail, a father and son, American citizens, who the US is blocking returning from a trip to Pakistan unless they submit to FBI interrogation without a lawyer and with a polygraph in Pakistan, where their constitutional rights don’t exist.

For your captioning pleasure, some pictures from a church service in New Orleans yestereday.

I think Americans have sacrificed

I guess Bush won’t accept Ahmadinejad’s proposal of a live debate. They could have sold that one on pay-per-view and rebuilt New Orleans with the proceeds.

Yesterday Bush was interviewed by Brian Williams, and I’ve finally found where NBC was hiding the transcript. Williams asked if he shouldn’t have asked the American people to make some sort of sacrifice, possibly a goat, after 9/11. Bush:

Americans are sacrificing. I mean, we are. You know, we pay a lot of taxes. America sacrificed when they, you know, when the economy went into the tank. Americans sacrificed when, you know, air travel was disrupted. American taxpayers have paid a lot to help this nation recover. I think Americans have sacrificed.

Those things are not sacrifice. Sacrifice is something people do actively, voluntarily; the things Bush enumerates are things that people endure passively. A passive, demobilized citizenry, which experiences The War Against Terror (TWAT) only as something they see, as Bush often says, on their television screens, as a consumer good, which only turns out for one “accountability moment” every four years, that’s the sort of citizenry that suits Bush.

Asked whether he ever gets advice from his father:

He understands that often times I have information that he doesn’t have [!]. And he understands how difficult the world is today. And I explain my strategy to him, I explain exactly what I just explained to you back there how I view the current tensions, and he takes it on board, and leaves me with this thought, “I love you son.”

He makes it sound like a really crappy finger-painting his father has to coo over and put up on the refrigerator, then shudder every time he gets a glass of milk.

Actually, Bush the Elder not chewing out Chimpy for his massively incompetent foreign policy, now that’s a sacrifice.

Does that make Rummy a suicide bomber?

Article on Pentagon website: “Rumsfeld: Truth Serves as Powerful Weapon.”

Look, there is so much ammunition

I can understand wearing a Ronald Reagan mask to rob a Bank of America, but why the cape?

Improbable government announcement of the day, from the White House deputy press secretary: “President Bush was saddened to learn of the passing of Egypt’s Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, Naguib Mahfouz.”

The three major Russian “opposition” parties merge, because Putin tells them to. They will compete with Putin’s United Russia party as to who can most slavishly implement Putin’s policies. Really, that’s what the head of the Party of Life party said.

Must-read: WaPo article on how Shiite militias dominate Iraq’s Health Ministry, especially its 15,000-strong “security” force (of 30,000 total employees), and periodically drag Sunnis out of their beds and kill them. In the US, this is called “managed care.”

Harper’s has some phrases from a web page, “Military English Learning” on the website of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army:

The principles of war can never be changed.

Special forces can penetrate into an enemy’s rear to gather information.

Without military maps, you don’t know where you are sometimes.

It is necessary for war fighters to master the skills of temporary fixations.

There have been too many famous battles.

Look, there is so much ammunition.

Oh, so many weapons. Great!

The weapons displayed here are almost conventional weapons.

These are tanks, aren’t they?

Yes. But this one is an armored vehicle.

We saw this kind of missile on TV.

As far as we know, there are atomic weapons.

Mass-destruction weapons bring more difficulties to the first aid.

Theoretically, space must be digitized.

Cyber-war techniques can be treated as weapons of mass destruction.

Do you know the most terrorist event?

It was the September 11 attack in New York.

Thousands of people died unnatural deaths.

The World Trade Center can never be mended.

Bin Laden immediately became the most famous person of the world.

Has he been dead or still alive?

No one knows, I’m afraid, except himself.

The original pages have been scrubbed from the PLA site, but some cached versions may be found here. The page of useful phrases for the interrogation of POWs includes these:

92. What do you hope now?

102. How is the morale of your unit?

103. Where is your vanguard?

104. Do you know our lenient policy towards POWs?

105. The chief criminals shall be punished without fail.

106. Those who are accomplice under duress shall go unpunished.

107. Those who perform deeds of merit shall be rewarded.

Bush in New Orleans

Bush: “I take full responsibility for the federal government’s response, and a year ago I made a pledge that we will learn the lessons of Katrina and that we will do what it takes to help you recover. I’ve come back to New Orleans to tell you the words that I spoke on Jackson Square are just as true today as they were then.”

Yes, that’s exactly the problem.

Fucker.

There is a difference between healthy debate and self-defeating pessimism. Yes there is.

Cheney and Rummy’s speeches at the VFW’s annual meeting slash hootenanny [correction: Cheney was at the VFW, Rummy was at the American Legion convention] were designed, just in time for the elections, to limit debate about the war in Iraq. Cheney, while claiming to believe in democratic values, insisted that some forms of speech just aren’t legitimate: “there is a difference between healthy debate and self-defeating pessimism.” The Bushies tend to prefer self-defeating optimism.


By the way, I had to check the spelling of hootenanny at dictionary.com, which has this definition: “3. Older Use. a thingumbob.”

Rummy castigated the “moral and intellectual confusion” of those who don’t see the danger of the “new kind of fascism,” a confusion that “can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.” (To clear up any remaining confusion, he slipped a few more references to fascism into the speech as delivered than were in the prepared version that link goes to.)


He has a whole list of things people, especially people in the journalism business, have said that he doesn’t like. Why, did you know that in the leading newspapers, there were 10 times the number of mentions of one of the Abu Ghraib torturers as of the guy who won the first Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror? Shocking. He’s also still pissed off at Amnesty International calling Guantanamo the gulag of our times, more than a year later. He wants the VFW to perform a “watchdog role” over the media, citing approvingly the VFW’s successful Mau Mauing of the Smithsonian into censoring its exhibition on the Enola Gay in 2003.


Also, “I know there are some places where Boy Scouts are a subject of scorn.” He does not say where those places are. Girl Scout jamborees, maybe.